Barack Black Eagle

Today I was looking over the accounts and photographs of Barack Obama’s Inauguration both in the newspaper and online.

Much has been made of the fact that the 44th President of the United States is the first African-American to hold office and I had wondered about the first people of the US, the indigenous American-Indians (although I think they should be called Indian-Americans).

I was delighted to discover that, amongst the millions attending the historic event were members of the Crow Nation Horse Mounted Unit who made a special appearance in the Inaugural Parade. Over 50 people from the Crow Tribe of Montana made the trip to Washington DC to accept the invitation to participate in the ceremony – the majority of them made the trip to DC by bus, which took almost three full days.

The Crow Nation was the first tribe to endorse Barack Obama and adopted him in May 2008 . He was adopted as part of a Crow family under the name “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land.”  At the adoption ceremony he said “I want to thank my new parents – the nicest parents you could ever want to know. I like my new name – Barack Black Eagle.”

In August 2001, Mr Dancing and I were fortunate enough to attend the Annual Crow Fair held at The Crow Agency in Montana and I remember well standing in the baking heat taking photos of such a wonderful, colourful parade before going on to see the pow-wow where I learnt more about jingle dresses, grass, traditional and fancy dancers and listened to the amazing drums and songs.

Just remember that, if you ever visit a pow-wow, and someone drops an eagle feather, then there will be a special sacred dance for it!  I’m sure that there would have been a special dance, too, for Barack Black Eagle.